Epictetus, a slave and a philosopher, lived in this ancient world of insecurity and uncertainty. Every time you kiss your child goodnight, he said, you should tell yourself, “Perhaps it will be dead in the morning.” The suggestion that you think of your child’s imminent death every night seems alien and cruel to us. But in the ancient Roman world, more than a quarter of newborns died before their first birthday, and half of all children died before their tenth. Epictetus was not being needlessly harsh. Instead, he was reminding parents to be grateful for what they had in that moment, and to
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